


chapel of love

by dnbroughs



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Drunken tattoos, LITERALLY, M/M, i don't have the time to be writing this yet here we are, richie and bill are bros, stan runs away from his wedding, vegas baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 07:31:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14444415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dnbroughs/pseuds/dnbroughs
Summary: God had made him Stan, a modest accountant living in New York City who was barely twenty six and had just ran away from his own wedding.God had made him a disaster.





	chapel of love

**Author's Note:**

> i've had this idea running around in my head for a while and decided to write it while i still had the muse, but please excuse any general suckiness that lies therein

Stan ran the silky material of his tie through his calloused fingers, sighing woefully at the feeling of the soft fabric against his rough skin, revelling in its comfort; it was the most he’d had in months. 

He was never one for woebegone lamentations and maudlin sighs. Cynicism and sardonic observations, yes, but never outright sulking. Yet here he was, sipping at the bitter, lukewarm gloop in his ceramic cup, and counting the birds on his tie. Swallows. His favourite, picked especially for the occasion. He wishes now more than anything that he was a swallow, preening his castle of of twigs, lulling the bustling city to sleep with the sweet swell of his song, flying away without a second glance…

But no. God had made him Stan, a modest accountant living in New York City who was barely twenty six and had just ran away from his own wedding. God had made him a disaster.

He sighed again, nodding in thanks to a waitress as she refilled his cup with a half bored, half languid expression. The incessant hum of the cheap fluorescent signs illuminating the diner did little to quell the nervous thump of his heart. He noticed the way the fuchsia hue obscured the world around him, and despite the heavy guilt that sat in his stomach, gnawing at his insides with an insatiable hunger, he felt safe in the purple tinged haven of the unextraordinary greasy spoon.

It was then he thought of her. Throughout this whole ordeal, not once had he thought of his fiancee, though he supposed that it didn’t differ much from his usual preference of time allocated to think about ‘the woman you were going to spend the rest of your life with’. Richie had duly likened her to your first car: reliable enough, something exciting to slip into conversation, but is ultimately a simple commodity that was going to let you down sooner or later. Stan couldn’t agree more with his best friend and his best man. Well, his old best man. He felt like asking her to marry him had been the right thing to do, more a public service than an act of love. Still, he had a great stag party.

The thought made him shudder.

He doesn’t remember much about it. The whole weekend was tainted and polluted with the unmistakable haze of alcohol, flashing lights, and the recalcitrant sense of ease afforded only by ‘Vegas, baby!’. What he can recollect are brief flashes of a black synthetic wig, the scent of a cologne he doesn’t own and a tattoo of Bette Davis’s cat like orbs that bore into him everytime he took a shower. 

He really has tried to conjure thoughts of the four day trip, organised meticulously by Bev and Eddie. He thinks he may have passed out somewhere between the stripclub and body shots, as he woke on a bench, with his head in Ben’s lap and Mike’s soft hands tracing through his curls as he tried to locate the three missing members of their party. He doesn’t even remember how he got home, only knowing that he had showered for a good hour before he even dared to make sense of the long weekend.

Fingers ran over the ink now, hoping that, if maybe he massaged the it for long enough, a light would go off in his brain and his memories would all come flooding back, engulfing him in a smug sense of self gratification tied with being in the know.

The only thing that flooded him, however, was the deep scent of spice and wood and autumn as a body squeezed up next to him at the counter, trying to flag down a waitress. Stan looked up at him, a sharp pang of recognition jolting him upright. The auburn tint of his hair was still faintly visible from under the neon lights, and his jaw was sat as if he was trying to keep his mouth shut. Breathing in, Stan could feel the ghost of worn flannel and buttery leather under his hands and a burning against the inside of his wrist. Something about the man felt familiar and warm, like coming home to your own bed after weeks of being away, and it uneased Stan in a way that scared him. In all the years he’d been in a relationship, Stan had never felt as soothed by another body as he did now. The man’s name was on the tip of Stan’s tongue, but he was afraid that if he allowed himself to say it, everything would become too real and too complicated and too  _ much.  _ Besides, Stan had no idea what was drawing him in anyway. It could be his open stance, of his freckled skin, or the heat radiating from his body. He had nothing to do with Stan’s wild mystery ride of a bachelor party. Did he?

Surreptitiously, he hoped, he glanced at the inside of the man’s arm and kicked himself as a sharp gasp left his lips, feeling betrayed by his own shock. 

There, glaring back at him was a tattoo of Bette Davis, a carbon copy of his own.

He tried to act cool as the man looked at him, taking an unsuspicious sip from his mug, and prayed he oozed nonchalance as eyes raked over his stiff form.

“Stan?”

Cursing his obliviousness to subtlety, he turned to look at the man next to him, and found himself staring into a pair of strangely comforting blue hues as his heart thumped violently against his chest, clubbing his lungs and knocking the breath out of him. Immediately, he was hit with the unmistakable wail of the wedding march, the comfortable hug of a gold band around the juncture of his fourth finger and his knuckle, the bubbling elation in his stomach as he muttered ‘I Do’...

It seems now that Stan did more than drink himself to oblivion. It seems now that Stan did more than spend all his loose change on the slot machines. It seems now that being a runaway groom was the least of his worries.

It seems now, that Stan had got hitched. To Bill Denbrough. His best friends adopted brother, who was irrevocably, frustratingly, overwhelmingly off limits. It seems now, that stan was utterly fucked.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on tumblr @d-nbroughs !


End file.
